{"id":7742,"date":"2012-01-07T12:29:54","date_gmt":"2012-01-07T12:29:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=7742"},"modified":"2012-01-07T12:29:54","modified_gmt":"2012-01-07T12:29:54","slug":"satnav-savvy-or-stupidity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=7742","title":{"rendered":"SatNav Savvy\u2026 or Stupidity?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story has been on the news<\/a> the last few days, and it concerns \u201cissues\u201d over satnav devices giving \u201cwrong directions\u201d.<\/p>\n

The story is heavy on the usual media overkill. The vast majority of cases involving satnavs giving \u201cwrong directions\u201d are down to people being too stupid for words. The big question is not what to do with their satnav software, but whether these people should be allowed on the roads in the first place.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll get lorry drivers going down roads that are too narrow for their vehicles \u2013 even though it is a perfectly legal route, and absolutely fine for anyone else. Or you\u2019ll get people taking \u201cthe next turn right\u201d and ending up on canal tow paths or railway lines because they\u2019re simply too thick to recognise the difference between a road and\u2026 well, NOT a road.<\/p>\n

Even the examples of ambulances \u201cteetering on 100ft cliffs\u201d would require a lot more information before I would concede the satnav was to blame. Even big-nuts emergency \"Innocent-lookingservice drivers possessing all the relevant anorak certificates are capable of judgement errors in the heat of the moment.<\/p>\n

But it isn\u2019t specifically the satnavs which are at fault. Even if the driver were following a printed road atlas mistakes could be made.<\/p>\n

The road shown on the left, and clipped at high zoom from Google Maps, shows nothing unusual. However, in reality where it crosses that stream (which looks like a lake on the map), there is a FORD.<\/strong> The corresponding Google image on the right shows this \"Google<\/strong>clearly. I take my pupils there sometimes\u2026 but not when it\u2019s been raining, because then it COULD<\/strong> be as big as a lake (and often is)!<\/p>\n

It\u2019s only when you look at a genuine Ordnance Survey map (this one below is copied from their online resource) that there is any hint of there being anything unusual there \u2013 and even then you\u2019ve got to be observant enough to note that the stream appears across<\/strong> the road and not under it. You\u2019d need one of those huge fold-out hiking maps to get this sort of detail, but then a simple \u00bd mile trip to the shops would straddle three of them!<\/p>\n

Most modern road atlases are NOT Ordnance Survey standard and this sort of information simply isn\u2019t detailed \u2013 and even when it is you need a magnifying glass to e\"Ordnanceven get close to being able to identify features like this from the style of print.<\/p>\n

There was<\/strong> a time when good road atlases had features like this lettered with \u201cFORD\u201d in tiny writing, but many such crossings have disappeared \u2013 and I suppose it saves money omitting those that remain.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t the satnavs, but the maps which are deficient \u2013 if you can call it \u201cdeficient\u201d not to identify every tiny feature. And even then, they\u2019re only deficient if those using them are also lacking in common sense.<\/p>\n

My point is that even when the information is present, it is so insignificant as to be easily missed. This ford is just one example, but almost all cases of lorries getting stuck in narrow lanes, or under low bridges; and of people trying to drive up sheer cliff faces only to discover they can\u2019t are down to stupidity (and poor road skills) on one hand, and the difficulty in providing sufficient detail to cater for such stupidity on the other.<\/p>\n

Are satnavs going to have to now contain data on gradients? Or warnings for every single river that might have a tow path entryway near it? Or perhaps audible alerts to identify field gateways and farm driveways for the benefit of the peripatetic pillocks passing by?<\/p>\n

It would appear that the Transport Minister thinks so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This story has been on the news the last few days, and it concerns \u201cissues\u201d over satnav devices giving \u201cwrong directions\u201d. The story is heavy on the usual media overkill. The vast majority of cases involving satnavs giving \u201cwrong directions\u201d are down to people being too stupid for words. The big question is not what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[80,87,92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adi-related","category-news","category-transport"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}